Laser micromachining can be employed in many applications, such as the fabrication of a strip die for plasma display panel (PDP) phosphor printing. Laser drilling holes may generally be performed by percussion drilling, trepanning, or milling. For percussion drilling, the laser beam may simply be focused at one position on the material. For trepanning, the laser beam may follow an outer contour of the hole to be drilled. For milling, the laser beam may follow a spiraling path to ablate the material. Each of these processes applies the laser beam to the material at normal incidence. Drilling holes with laser beams using these processes generally produces tapered holes, i.e., holes for which the entrance diameter is larger than the exit diameter. However, for certain applications, it may be desirable to drill holes with no taper or with reverse taper.